Ecclesiastes, Fleeting and timeless

Biblical Philosophy

It
is this bitter discovery of mortality that propels Kohelet on his quest
for meaning. We are reminded of Franz Rosenzweig’s words that “All
cognition of the All originates in death, in the fear of death.”36
Or of the story of the young Siddhartha, the first Buddha, who lived in Indiajust a few centuries after Solomon. His
privileged upbringing, comparable to Solomon’s own, shielded him from
the reality of the outside world; Siddhartha embarked on his spectacular
spiritual journey “to find the real meaning of life and death”37
only after his first confrontation with age, illness, and mortality.
Kohelet’s quest, as well, is triggered by the traumatic realization of
human transience—that the greatest efforts of the wisest king cannot
stop the flow of time, nor can they eliminate suffering and injustice from
the world.

Dejection
soon gives way to acceptance, however, as the book enters its second
stage, starting at 6:4 and running through chapter 7, in which Kohelet
begins to view the ephemeral nature of reality more philosophically.38
Combined phrases such as “transient and grievous”39 are
completely abandoned in this section, less than halfway through the book.
The neutrality of the six appearances of hevel in this stage is typified
by the example of temporary flattery: “The cheers of the ignorant,” we
read, are “like the crackling thorns under a pot; all so temporary,
too.”40 Kohelet loses no sleep over the fickle nature of
fools’ praise and fleeting popularity. Having resigned himself to
transience, he has come to recognize that it may not be inherently bad
after all. This is expressed most vividly in the verses describing the
stillborn child